


Origami Heart

by Himitsu_no



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Aziraphale loves Crowley, Crowley is a character in a book Aziraphale loves, Crowley loves... someone he can only feel, Fuck tagging this is a nightmare, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 16:55:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29281821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Himitsu_no/pseuds/Himitsu_no
Summary: "We seek love desperately to lend more vivid colors into the blur of our hours spent in daydreams and days of loneliness and the years… our pale existence. But the truth of it is this – love wears us off and it wears us thin. It breaks us more frequently than it builds us, and it bleaches our hearts dry until we barely notice when they crack at the mere touch of fingerprints.In my experience, with every person we let go of, we lose a bit of ourselves on the way. Films we had wanted to see we can’t stand to find in our listings, and songs we’ll never hear again, bands we don’t want to talk about, because they all bring back the shadow of a ghost that has to remain in the past. Words will always remind us, and familiar streets will be replaced with alternatives just so we don’t run into those phantoms. We stop being so demanding about so many things, until we end up with the just barely enough. We lose and we keep losing until what? What is left?"--That fic in which Crowley is a character in a book falling in love with its reader.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 39





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Roasted_and_ghosted](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roasted_and_ghosted/gifts), [GayDemonicDisaster (scrapheapchallenge)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrapheapchallenge/gifts).



> Prompted by a Facebook post in which the character falls in love with the reader and when the book ends they supposedly die. (Spoiler: they don't die)
> 
> Wrote this on a whim, barely reread it and it's late, so do be kind and ignore the blatant mistakes or repetitions. I love you all and would love to hear from you <3
> 
> Dedicated to my pals Kelly and Kirsty :)

This is the story of a book within a book, and a novel without romance finding romance without its novel. It might not make sense now, and that’s perfectly fine.

Now, you must know this story may not have a happy ending. To be fair, one seldom knows when starting a book. But I will give you this – this is a promise of happiness.

This is the story of a character that only existed in the real world, quite where you are reading this from. Are you holding your mobile or hunched over your computer? It doesn’t matter. What matters it that he used to lead a life in some ways similar to yours.

He graduated from university in his fifties, because life doesn’t always happen the way we intend it to. He’d had a good life so far, though – he wasn’t one to complain much, though every one else wouldn’t entirely see eye to eye with how carelessly he dismissed the pains he’d endured so far.

But he was mildly happy, one could say, as happy as a widower in his fifties could be, living in another continent from where most of his family lived – the ones that still lived, anyway. He’d graduated with the highest grades and recommendations from most of his professors, and the friendship of many of his peers. He raided libraries in his free time and he read every minute he wasn’t working at Tracy’s. Work was exhausting and he dreamed of having his own shop someday, though he thought it impossible to own books and sell them in the same place. Perhaps he could just win the lotto and hoard them instead. That, of course, meant he would have to start playing someday. Which he still hasn’t.

But that was all fine, he rather thought. He wasn’t miserable and his loneliness was quite bearable, specially when he read.

He loves his Wildes and Shakespeares and Nerudas, but this one book mailed by a dear friend on his birthday, this was certainly special.

This is also the story of Anthony, of this one book, and it started like this:

"I don’t know about you, but I live under the impression that loves wears us off. We seek it desperately to lend more vivid colors into the blur of our hours spent in daydreams and days of loneliness and the years… our pale existence. But the truth of it is this – love wears us off and it wears us thin. It breaks us more frequently than it builds us, and it bleaches our hearts dry until we barely notice when they crack at the mere touch of fingerprints.

Everybody wants to love, but nobody wants to have their hearts broken. Not a single soul, in my understanding.

In my experience, with every person we let go of, we lose a bit of ourselves on the way. Films we had wanted to see we can’t stand to find in our listings, and songs we’ll never hear again, bands we don’t want to talk about, because they all bring back the shadow of a ghost that has to remain in the past. Words will always remind us, and familiar streets will be replaced with alternative routes just so we don’t run into those phantoms. We stop being so demanding about so many things, until we end up with the just barely enough. We lose and we keep losing until what? What is left?

If that is the meaning of loving with your entire soul, and then just your entire body, and next time just a cautious bit of your heart, then… what is left? What is left of you?"

Anthony, he would learn, had a long list of broken relationships and things he couldn’t eat anymore and music he couldn’t listen to lest he’d feel actually sick – as sick as any character in a $9,99 paperback could feel.

"Happily ever after comes with an expiry date, and one day you wake up to find you want to kiss lips that aren't there, you want to undress someone else. It's only human, there's nothing to be ashamed of here. One day you look into the eyes of someone you thought you knew to find they are a stranger you never knew. Also human nature, and deeply unsettling.

Let it be said I find little to no comfort in knowing others have it worse or are living just the same, because misery shouldn't be held as a trophy, there can be no solace in another’s misfortune. Still we all hurt just like every other person on the planet. And that’s that."

And Aziraphale thought it was almost endearing the way he guarded himself: so raw, so chaffed, so immensely hurt and human and beautiful in his own way, the way the wind at the stations blew the pages and the hint of a smile hung between the lines in black ink and elegant serifs.

In fact, the more he got to know him, the more he thought of him as a friend, even when he absently pushed a piece of paper between the paragraphs. Anthony lived in his mind and kept him company through most of his days. His voice was in his head making snarky comments when he smiled kindly at a client and hung over his shoulder and mocked the absurdity of prices of the stores in Soho.

Every night, when he closed the book and turned off the light, his presence remained in the air and it clung to the insides of his mind like a quiet lullaby of a voice, like velvet on his fingertips. If he dreamt of a man he’d never meet in real life, that was nobody’s business.

Anthony, for his part, carried on with his life as scripted, and walked back from work listening to his indie albums and foreign bands nobody ever knew of. These days, though…

He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but these days there was comfort in the quiet of the streets, and he refrained from filling it with the same meaningless lyrics he’d heard for the past five years since his life started. It was a funny thought – though there was nothing humorous about it – how he had very little recollection of his life before that time. There were people he’d know since forever, and he’d had an okay-enough childhood that didn’t leave heaps of traumas to work out in therapy, at least he didn’t think. He thought of himself as a normal bloke, though he’d never met a single soul that was anywhere near how he described himself.

He knew who he was and he knew his story, he just couldn’t remember living most of it. But he also thought everybody else had the same impressions and didn’t linger much on the quaintness of it.

These days, though. He felt a presence to his side, like the ghost of someone he hadn’t met. And not literally a ghost, because they don’t exist – people live and people die, and that’s it. Nothing to read beyond those lines, and someday this too would end: the last page would be read and the book would be closed. If there would be laughter or applause, it was not up to him, was it?

Still he muted his music tonight and felt good in the moonlight, watching the lights go off in the homes toward his own. It was late and it was getting colder and colder, but something warm involved him and it felt _good_.

Whatever this ghost of a presence was, it was welcome.

* * *

Anthony wasn't bothered by how it seemed to follow him everywhere, and how it seemed to react to his every thought.

Not once did he consider it invasive. He knew invasive, he’d _lived_ invasive. This was… like sunlight seeping into your bones in a cold day, like spring thawing the bleak loneliness of winter. It was like ink drawn in curls and loops in a well-loved letter, a hug when you need it most. And God knows he needed it most.

The wear and tear of relationships prior, if anyone could call _those_ ‘relationships’ – Anthony air-quoted despite the words being only in his head – had left him scarred and guarded these days, bitter and nasty on the outside to protect a heart that could only break so easily.

Aziraphale loved it dearly, those words and thoughts and sighs of his. He reacted with sighs of his own, clutching his chest or resting the book against his heart to savor a moment longer the depth of those feelings. He fell in love easy with these characters, he knew, but Anthony was something else. He felt connected to him, and he cherished how every word in this blessed book seemed to have been woven and tightly knit just for him. Like Anthony had been created for him, and for him alone. That he could understand and love him like no one else.

His co-workers teased him about his absentmindedness these days, and he only smiled mysteriously back at them – no, they would not be introduced to the person that was making him smile by himself or furrow his eyebrows in thought whenever someone mentioned anything that reminded him of this beloved character. And let’s be honest, every little thing, everywhere, reminded him of Anthony.

In his mind Anthony scoffed at that and went on a long rant that _that_ 's exactly what he meant when he said people are worn thin by love. When the story ended and he was left with nothing but scattered memories of him, those love songs would sting instead, and the poetry he saw in everything would hurt.

But he carried on discovering the connections and loving every syllable of him, and Anthony carried on with his life too, the small adventures of a man comprised of vowels and too many consonants. There was very little prose and no rhymes, so really, Anthony could not fathom anybody would like to read him if he were a book or a film, despite how outstanding the soundtrack, and it _would_ be if his Spotify was anything to go by, in his not-so-humble opinion.

He thought every person had these moments where they listened to their playlist and imagined this particular song would fit looking out the bus window, or running towards someone, or watching a sunset, or riding a bike. He wondered, briefly, what songs he would pick for the credits, while people exited the theater. What song would play in the first minute and what people would feel when they saw him for the first time.

First times were a big deal for him, so he worked hard to present himself nicely. It gave him a lot of trouble in the mornings but when he looked at himself at night, he would be glad he put in the effort to look more human than he felt.

In all honesty, he felt his heart was made of paper, so easily as it could be crumpled. And like his tears were ink staining his face, creasing his smiles bitter. He would fold and tuck bits of himself a little too if he could, the most brittle parts.

These days, though, the ink running through his heart felt red and bright instead of the boring black it had been so far. It was red and rich and filled his vowels and too many consonants with oxygen and the lines of his thoughts derailed constantly, dreaming of being held against a warm chest, of being held tight and of whispers of good night.

His lines, before so concise and sure, were feeling more drafted and less defined.

He thought, if he were to ever be a book, he would like some colored pages filled with whimsical illustrations of the night sky with bright stars and a hand holding his own, as worn as he was.

And there would definitely be more ballads in the crappy film adaptation.

* * *

Aziraphale was still smiling when he picked a new piece of paper for a makeshift bookmark – all the other ones already marking pages he loved to go back to and reread. His fingertips hovered over the end of the chapter he’d just read and he read it once again, committing it to heart. Anthony was taking up so much of him already, so much of him in his mind, his thoughts, his heartbeats.

He knew he should take it slow, now: he was already two thirds into the book, and if he wasn’t careful, he’d finish by the middle of the weekend.

He knew he didn’t want to rush into the final pages and feel that sense of disorientation he usually got at the end of a really good book. But mostly, he didn’t want to miss Anthony. In fact, he didn’t think he could live another day without his company.

So he read the end of the paragraph one more time, running his fingers through the lines as if he could touch the character himself.

Anthony, for his part, let himself be lulled to sleep by the presence of a friend. A smile in secret, the promise of companionship. He laid on his side and shifted into the end of the bed, crafting in his mind and arm draped around his waist, warm feet against his cold ones. There was a sigh of content near his ear, and he fell asleep.

* * *

Anthony Jay Crowley woke in a start, looking around for his phone and the loud beeping of the bloody alarm.

He’d had a weird dream and he’d been ripped from it by the notion of being on the edge of tardiness, burning his breakfast and missing his bus. He cursed and opened his phone to get an Uber.

There was a message from an unknown number, and his heart nearly beat itself out of his chest.

He was still reeling from it, having lost track of time, when a car honked at him.

“Are you Anthony?”

He nodded and got in, reading the message over and over again.

_‘I’m so sorry your day’s started so dreadfully. I wish we could_

_meet and I could take you for a proper breakfast’_

‘Who is this?’, he replied, but his phone remained silent for the rest of the day.

The following day the same thing happened, but he didn’t get a text.

He briefly wondered if he’d imagined things, but the message was still there. The number was unavailable, and thus could not be saved, but it kept him on his tiptoes.

Three days went by without a new message and he pretended to give up.

On the fifth day, he got another one.

_‘I can’t stop thinking about you. I keep thinking how wonderful it would be to take you to lunch and have you complain about the outrageous prices of the salads and see your eyes light up at the mention of those bands you love. I have started listening to some of them, and they all make me think of you. Perhaps some day they will make my heart break, but for now, I only dream of a chance to meet you.’_

Anthony spent two extra hours awake that night, dreaming of a quiet laughter and soft moans of pleasure around homemade pasta and droplets of wine on the carpet.

On the eighth, he read:

_‘I am so afraid of missing you. I am nearly at the end, and you are so dear,_

_you don’t even know it. I wish you could feel it.’_

He could definitely feel it, whatever _‘it’_ they’d referred to.

This time, however, the didn’t feel the warm gooey thing in his paper heart. He felt dread. Like something imminent and terrible on the brink of his existence. What end? What… _where_ did this message come from? Why couldn’t he reach back? What did ‘end’ mean? Was it death? Was it _his_ death?

He barely slept that night. He felt the tightness of phantom arms around him, fingers tangled in his copper hair. But his heart was crumpled.

Aziraphale fell asleep on the subway, clutching the book to his chest. The happiness he usually felt was gradually being replaced by a looming sadness. There were only twenty pages left to this book – and while the plot in itself wasn’t exactly intriguing or exceptionally well-thought out, Someone had spent a massive amount of care into building the characters from the ether.

He loved Anthony’s background story and his interaction with the other characters, but most of all, he loved _him_. He was so unique and kind in his own way.

As a reader, Aziraphale could see through the façade of the dark personality he displayed for the world, something shining relentlessly underneath. Anthony was a force of nature in his, very real, world. His words shook him to his core and he’d taken the habit of writing notes on his mobile and pretend he’d send them to his beloved character, if only to ease the burden of a life so barren of affection. He wished he could _flood_ him.

He briefly wondered if the other people who’d read this book felt the same and thought of looking it up on the internet.

Then, he thought better, and closed all seventeen tabs – he didn’t want to know of more and more people falling for his Anthony.

_His_.

* * *

Anthony smiled on his way back from work, replaying the same love song on his headphones. He felt content today - it was a warm evening, and all evenings had been atypically warm. He saw people on the streets in heavy coats but he kept shedding his, feeling like he was immersed in lukewarm bathwater.

His phone pinged.

A new message had arrived.

_‘Oh my dear, you are so loved!’_

Anthony closed his eyes and held it to his chest.

Over the next few days, they became more frequent. And they made him sadder and sadder.

_‘I’m reaching the end of this book and I don’t ever want to close it._

_I don’t want to spend another day without you.'_

Try as he might, he wanted to make sense of the words but didn't understand the metaphors weren't metaphors at all.

His heart was folded in on itself painfully, like origami folded to the shapes of hurt.

_‘I don’t ever want to forget you. I don’t suppose I could, written in me as you are._

_I hope you find happiness, even if I can't be the one to bring it to you.'_

_‘It’s so cold today that all I wanted to was curl under the blankets with you and never leave._

_I would hope that you’d like that too, if you could meet me and hopefully like me. I should only be so lucky.’_

_‘Only five pages left. What will I do without you brightening my days, dear heart?’_

_‘I didn’t think I could love this fiercely._

_And I would love you even more were you by my side._

_I never wished for anything this much, my beloved Anthony.’_

_‘Is it possible for a person to be reborn in paper and ink? If so, I would like to try._

_I wish I had the gift of words so I could write myself on that street with you,_

_taking your hand and walking you home. Making you dinner_ _and_

 _keeping you company. Running my fingers through_ _your hair and_

 _kissing your eyelids. Two pages left._ _I don’t want to let you go.’_

_'One page. I love you, Anthony.'_

Anthony cried himself to nothingness that night. He was a blot spilling over the pages, a mess of blurred lines and dark, pitch-black salt on bleached white paper.

“I don’t want to be forgotten”, he murmured.

And then, it was all over.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is really tiny, sorry, but it needed to be a separate one!  
> Hope you like it <3  
> Drop me a line and keep me fed this month :P

Aziraphale cradled the book against his chest, feeling his heartbeat throbbing against it, the endless flow of tears still falling into his pillow. He knew how orphaned one felt when finishing a book, but he didn’t think such an unpretentious novel would leave him so utterly wrecked.

He’d fallen head over heels with characters before, quite frequently, but never… there had never been any _Anthony_ s.

In fact, he didn’t even know if there would be any sort of sequel to this book, there had been no signs of it so far. It wasn’t even _popular_.

At some point he gave up on sleeping entirely, dragging his heavy and tired body to the kitchen for tea. At three a.m.

It was then that an idea hit him.

* * *

For the fifth night in a row, Anthony roams aimlessly in the rain, despondent and hopeless.

He can’t help missing the gentleness of that warm breeze on his hair, a quiet reassuring whisper in the night. He thinks of being tenderly enveloped in a hug, kisses sprinkled on his neck and a smile against his skin. In his mind’s eye the smiles are often soft, sometimes mischievous. All benevolent and loving and they fill him with love and crush his heart at the same time. This was the end of their story, and the tragedy was he didn’t even know who he mourned this time. He knew better than to trust love again, but love is the kind of thing that sneaks up on him time and time again. It was unstoppable, and he’d _tried_.

Now, what was he supposed to do after the last word had been read?

His numb legs took him down familiar streets and he turned a corner to a brightly-lit street, deserted at this time of night. Only one person stood there, holding a ridiculously yellow umbrella in the middle of the road.

It was a man, and when he turned around, he looked like a character he’d read in a book.

“Oh! Hello!”, the man said, walking towards him.

Anthony looked taken aback, stopping midstride. He was equally scared and intrigued.

“Do… Do I know you?”

The man stopped and for the first time, he seemed to hesitate.

“I was hoping… I was hoping you would… recognize me somehow.”

Inspecting him closer, he saw the hand that wasn’t holding the umbrella held a pen between thick fingers, skin stained with red ink.

“I’m not… not sure how this story will end, but I couldn’t leave yours alone. I hope you don’t mind if… if… I. I just didn’t want to let you go, my dear. Your story isn’t over. It can’t be over. I just… I.”

The man took a deep breath and smiled. It was just like Anthony had envisioned in his mind.

“I’d still like to take you to breakfast and lunch and dinner, if you’re amenable?”

Anthony’s eyes widened and his dumb, useless legs led him forward before he had a say in it, and he walked until he was under the umbrella, impossibly close to a man he's just met.

“Who are you?”

“Oh, yes. Hi", and his smile widened and his breath was warm in the fraction of a distance between them. A million suns in the space between two brackets.

"My name’s Aziraphale.”


End file.
